Opinion: Understanding Putin and Russia with a Disturbing Book

The invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022 and which military analysts predicted would last "no more than a week," is now three and a half years old. The situation remains extremely serious, with a daily scene of death, suffering, and destruction, but the conflict's presence in the news has diminished. Other factors of concern have emerged—especially those related to the Trump earthquake and the situation in Gaza—and Ukraine has receded into the background, while Putin's autocratic, warmongering, and imperialist initiative begins to be overlooked. It is therefore worth revisiting. Translated that same year, the volume "The Less We Know, the Better We Sleep" helps us revisit it, learning or remembering what matters. Written by David Satter, a historian and analyst of Russian reality since the Soviet period, who lived in Moscow for decades, this work leaves no reader indifferent. It is an excellent aid for anyone who wishes to understand the type of people who govern the world's third-largest military power—after the US and China—and its imperial project, understanding the dark methods they employ, intolerable in a state governed by the rule of law. The book begins with perestroika, seen as a time of disturbing but still limited transformations, then focuses on Boris Yeltsin's government, followed by the rise and triumphant establishment of Vladimir Putin, and concludes with the 2014 invasion of Crimea. As the original edition of the book came out in 2016, the more recent years and the current war are not yet present, but the circumstances that turned Russia into a tyranny supported by corruption and militarism, using force and propaganda to legitimize internal oppression and intimidate external enemies, ensuring the continuity of the current power, are. For Satter, the society that emerged from the end of the former Soviet Union possesses three prominent characteristics: "an economy dominated by a criminal oligarchy, an authoritarian political system, and, perhaps most importantly, a moral degradation that subverted all legal and ethical standards and made a true civil society impossible." Using highly detailed information, supported by Russian sources withheld from Russia itself, he demonstrates the construction of a landscape that is as violent and frightening as it is hopeless. The book follows a dizzying sequence. It begins by describing the involvement of Russian intelligence services in the attacks on residential areas that legitimized the repression in Chechnya and the establishment of unlimited power. It then recalls Yeltsin's chaotic government, supported by privatizations and an aggressive network of oligarchs. It then addresses Putin's rise and the methods he used to impose ultra-centralized power, crushing, with the support of former KGB agents, independent information and the opposition. It then shows how the Chechen attacks of 2002 and 2005 were used to reinforce his authority. Finally, Satter describes the groups artificially created to support the conquest of Crimea and Donbass on the ground, as the first phase of the attempt to crush Ukraine.

To anyone willing to read "The Less We Know, the Better We Sleep," the author recommends: "To understand Russia, we need to learn to do something truly difficult: believe the unbelievable." I experienced this difficulty in every one of the 210 pages of this compulsive volume, and I still haven't recovered from it.